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Saturday, April 01, 2006

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Ancient Greek Software for the PC

These programs are by Terry Bird, formerly Head of Classics at Colchester Royal Grammar School. They are very flexible, need little or no introduction and are instantly available to the student from a desktop icon (PC only). There are 40 or so programs in all, and are also very successful when used by the individual student out of the classroom. The programs have their own Greek character set preloaded, complete with breathings and iota subscript (but not accents), and allow typing in Greek or English as called for in the tests. Answers in Greek are a challenging part of these programs.
The vocabulary programs aim to teach the whole of the OCR GCSE list analysed without omissions into grammatical categories, eg: contracted verbs, adverbs, adjectives by type, nouns by type – focussed and clear learning. They consist of a multiple-choice test of meanings followed by a rigorous test requiring the correct Greek word to be typed in. Mistakes are re-tested. The vocabulary for any test can be the total list or a self-selected part of it, but the aim is complete and systematic coverage. It is an advantage to be able to address one section of the vocabulary at a time.

Another set of programs tests the endings of the main Greek noun types, asking for cases and offering excellent reinforcement. They give assistance by clear and helpful pages of grammatical information. For the confident a test of all these noun types, some 13 in all , is combined into one. These could be used at various stages.

Further programs test the indicative of verbs, allowing firstly the selection of tenses to be included in the test, in any combination, and then the choice of working from English to Greek or from Greek to English. Where appropriate several translations are available for tenses (e.g. the present). One test deals simply with the indicative of “luo”, another with a group of simple verbs like “luo”. A more advanced test allows questions on any indicative tense or combination of tenses of verbs with consonantal stems, the common Greek irregular verbs in fact. This is a potentially ferocious test! Virtually no Greek verb type is unavailable. This program also allows the pupil to see the complete conjugation of a chosen verb, with appropriate translations. Separate tests deal with the participles, infinitives, subjunctives and optatives of a wide range of verb types, with all tenses available or tailored to the individual student, from low demand to very high demand. Another test deals with the earliest contracted verbs encountered (present and imperfect), while a second test has a full range of contracted verb vocabulary, and yet another test deals with their subjunctives and optatives.

Ancient Greek Software for the PC

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